Sermon Tone Analysis

Jesus Christ.

We recognize that you are Lord and that you have been born in space and time in history.

And that because of that, we have a hope and a future.

We don't celebrate as something that is simply a good positive feeling and our memories are, or cultural celebration.

But we celebrate the reality of the birth of Jesus Christ.

We recognize him as Lord of our life, Lord Of Our Lives, as Lord of all, creation of water, Earth and Sky.

And we as a people, we want to reorient ourselves to that today.

Born a child and yet a king Born into poverty from incomparable riches.

Born to set the captives free.

We can't comprehend it.

We can't understand it, but we believe it.

We have firment, we want to share it.

We want to experience it.

We want to come today and we want to be reoriented to the reality that we as a people are in Christ through faith by the grace of God in sin, in the name of Jesus we pray.

Amen.

Well, it's good to be back with you.

Thank you so much to Pastor, John Mark for preaching.

So ably, and absolutely, in in such a timely Malay last week while I was unwell.

Thank you for your prayers and well-wishes.

It's been a, it's been a good week.

Congratulations to Noah and Hosanna, Kruger.

Who were married here?

Yesterday?

It's good to be able to continue to celebrate with you all, as you have come together as man and wife and have celebrated in obedience.

The fact that God has called you together.

Not simply to live together, but to commit to being together, so wonderful to be able to participate and Gloria celebrations, like that no matter what time of year.

The crime and punishment author, whose name, I won't butcher.

It should be a caught up on the screen said that man is fond of counting his troubles.

But does not count his joys.

If he counted them as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness.

Provided For it.

It's good enough.

We have enough will be happy enough if we only focused on the positive focused on the joyful, things in our life and we could be joyful people.

We're in a series.

So this is Christmas.

Someone came up to me and said, did you know that that's the name and one of the sediments of a popular Christmas song Yes, I did.

So that is very much intentional when my favorite version of the song is actually sung by.

I believe it's Rebecca st.

James and it's it's somewhat mournful.

So this is Christmas.

And I think this sometimes that's the reality that I come to the Christmas season with personally, is a little bit of a, a mournful unsettledness to the season.

And I want to recapture that mystery and joy that I experienced when I was a child and we'd go up to Michigan or something like that and we would experience know something that we don't experience much in Kirksville.

That's okay.

Sometimes still Chicago at heart.

I love a white Christmas, but

I think that I often step into trying to experience Christmas the way that our culture tries to get me to experience it, we looked at a couple weeks ago about Hope and how the world experienced is hoping today, I want to do that a little bit with joy Joy, sometimes to understand a word properly, it's good to look at the antonym of the word.

What what what is the opposite meaning in as I dug into into the word Joy? Really the antonym of joy is the sorrow that's related.

To Los.

Just the word loss with the experience of Christmas time.

Everyone in the room.

I'm sure can think of somebody that they have lost.

I left one my parents or grandparents.

Child a sibling, a friend.

In the more tragic, the loss, the deeper, the pain.

It's always the world goes through Christmas, it seeks to mitigate its sorrow over loss.

By stirring up, a sense of joy.

If loss is sorrow and that's bad.

We want to mitigate, we want to try to put Salve on it by having this thing that we might call Joy.

Into the world's Joy, involves remembering good memories of bygone times or people who are no longer alive and and people offer idioms and phrases to bring about vague ideas of comfort.

For example, you might hear someone say, I really feel my grandma with me more during the holidays.

even though that person's grandma is dead and gone and not with them at all,

Thoughts and memories about her.

Grandma are nice, but they have no basis in reality for being with them.

In our post modern culture, everyone becomes their own expert on spiritual matters.

Are you feel I hear people chuckling because you know it's true.

You've had those conversations in and you talk about somebody in and they talk about their angel.

That is their dead son or they talk about the, the good feelings.

They get when they do a certain combination of things and they just know beyond the shadow of a doubt that their loved one is there in the tragedy, is the wrong.

People are expected to make statements that are based purely on their own thoughts and give language to those thoughts.

In the culture validates those spots by accepting them as truth or at least is true enough.

if a Grandma's dead, she's not present here, but in the hereafter

We know from scripture that is appointed unto man once to die and then comes the judgment.

So, let me encourage you with some more good quotes This Time by John Stott.

John Stott, one of the one of the most influential men of the previous century and this is what I want us to kind of think through today.

This is this is one of the reasons we come to church This is why every week at church without fail we will open and study the holy word of God.

The scriptures.

John Scott said we must allow the word of God to confront us.

To disturb our security to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior.

We have to become in our minds in our belief system subservient to the word of God.

So that we can experience life is he would have us too so that we can experience life as it actually is not with a collection of idioms from a collection of idiots.

I mean people that you might know that was a joke that was trying to be a dick, was talk about anybody specifically.

There is truth and we can know truth through God's word, the Bible.

As interpreted Faithfully from the time of Jesus Christ.

Until now have passed down by faithful men and women.

So, that we can have a plethora of good, understanding of the word of God.

Invite you to turn with me now.

As we consider joy to Deuteronomy 20 text Suz, what we opened with Deuteronomy, 26 verse 11,

In the Old Testament in, in the New Testament, in the entirety of the Bible, we see that good things come from God and that man's proper response to good things from God is Thanksgiving, is praise is adoration.

Here we have a section about the offerings of first fruits and Tides.

This is this ceremony of how the people of God are to give thanks and inverse 11 of Deuteronomy 26, 27, you shall rejoice in all the good that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house and the levite and the Sojourner who is among you That is to say everything.

You have everything that everyone, you know, has all of those good things.

They come from the hand of God and you are to rejoice

Notice the word shall it's not an option.

You shall rejoice in all of the good that the Lord your God has given to you.

Do you have children?

That is a good gift from God. Do you have a home?

That is a good gift from God Rejoice.

Do you have a spouse or other people around you that you love?

Those are good gifts from God Rejoice, whether that spouse has been your spouse for 24 hours or less or not.

Good gifts from God rejoice.